by Jim Yackel

Created on: January 19, 2011

Big, shiny churches led by the self-anointed that preach to congregations of shiny, self-righteous people: yes, those edifices may be state of the art but are they earthquake-proof?  Do you worship the Holy, Triune, God or the position and the status that comes from being a part of an "it" church?

 Do you do everything "right?"  In that, do you overlook the plank in your own eye while criticizing the speck in your brother's eye?  Do you routinely rebuke your brother while keeping your own sin hid away in a vault?  After all, you wouldn't want to evidence any appearance of evil, right?  Well, to be sure, God is able to see right through your vault's door!

The shaking has begun and I can't help but believe it will intensify before the trumpet blows.  Before we are spared the wrath of the Tribulation, we may first have to endure some increasingly painful birth-pangs and unsettling tremors.  Oh sure, we've been shaking and aching for a while now, but in my spirit I believe that the metaphorical pain is going to intensify because we are not learning our lessons well.  We are here to represent, and in my spirit I believe there is too much misrepresentation taking place.  In so many ways, we are slandering our Holy, Triune, God.

I was wrong about the "Storm" that I saw coming in the fall of 2010; but in my heart I believe I may only have been off on the timeline.  Indeed, I am no prophet, but I do see and feel with a level of sensitivity that must be supernatural and like a tuning fork that sensitivity is humming...

The organized church will shake and tremble and more will be knocked out of their theater-style seating.  There will be loss because so many are losing sight of Him.  There are many who memorize their scriptures well and then twist them to their own advantage while using the Bible as a weapon against the lost and back-slidden and not as the book of truth, salvation, and love - His love!

Love - where is the love?  This writer is seeing more love shining from the "lost" than the "found."  Additionally, so many of the found appear to be losing their humility while the lost are being frightened into it.  This is not how it should be!

I fall short and I am not too prideful to admit it.  I admit that I am weak without Jesus - weak, no wait...dead without Him!  I want to love like He does!  I want to be used by Him!  I strive to be increasingly alive in Him!  But, without following Him, my wretchedness will be malodorous and reeking.

The times may grow much harder before we who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior - in true repentance - get to go home.  And while the times grow more difficult, many are going to be shaken from their thrones of self-anointing.  Many are going to have the doors ripped from their vaults of self-righteousness; and I am not only referring to pastors, prophets, and other anointed.  I am also speaking of the common amongst us. 

As conditions grown increasingly stormy, God will be looking for leaders.  He is not looking for those who are shiny.  He is looking for those who truly walk in His love and have the grit and toughness to lead. 

Yes, He is looking for those that know that they are too broken and imperfect to lead without His leading.

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